Gaffes

08.21.12

Why No One Stops Biden's Gaffes

Todd Akin has been blasted from all corners of the political spectrum for his recent remarks about rape. Yet there is another national political figure who regularly makes offensive gaffes and who has no chance of being removed from his party's ticket. The figure, of course is Joe Biden. The list of Biden's gaffes is long, most recently he suggested Republicans would usher in a return of slavery ("They're going to put y'all back in chains." he said to a Virginia audience).

So how does Biden get away with it? Ed Morrisey propose one theory: the media just doesn't expect better from him at this point:

The media is so used to Biden gaffes that only the true aficionados even collect them anymore. Had Akin been as well known and the media as inured to his verbal missteps, Akin's comment about "legitimate rape" might not have caused as much outrage.

After being caught plagiarizing British Labour leader Neil Kinnock's speeches in 1987 — right down to adopting Kinnock's family history as his own — Biden has hardly relented in his gaffe production. A few years ago, Biden tried adopting an Indian accent to describe his customer experience at 7-Eleven. Even in this past week, Biden mistook the century in which we live, asking, "[W]here's it written we cannot lead the world in the 20th century in making automobiles?" The Los Angeles Times reported last week that the White House stopped providing transcripts from Biden events two months ago; Politico reported at the same time that Biden's handlers try wheedling the media into editing Biden's statements to cover his gaffes.